Eli,
Bear with me.
Apologies to apiarists and myrmecologists. My impression on how bees and ants find food is they all indvidiually set out sort of randomly. One finds something, others follow, until the food runs out or someone randomly finds a better supply and they all follow to that new supply.
I thing much of capitalism operates this way and it explains the boom/bust nature of markets.
The French Revolution operated somewhat similarly. Adopting an increasing revolutionary position worked until it didn't. Kind of like the ants/bees/capitalism metaphor.
Seems to me that is what is happening with the Kavanaugh accusations. Some of them the charges seem absurd but as long as they are having an impact the ants will throw them out.
My theory also explains the path of the Democratic party towards Democratic Socialism. If something is working, why not try the next logical step. Worked for the Dems right up until the point of 1972: Nixon-Everything, McGovern-Nothing.
Trump is the peripatetic ant, always shouting to the group: Hey, there's another food pile right here! Everyone follows, but he's only there long enough to spot another food pile and tweet to everyone to follow.
The press are, of course, the useful idiots (emphasis on idiots) in this game.
Bill
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Friday, September 21, 2018
Jags 31 NE 20
Eli,
I don't know when I flipped past the NE game. I just remember the score was Jags big, NE little. "That's too bad," I thought, "Maybe because the defensive coach with the beard is gone," and flipped.
Mabye I'm just bored with football and the way the rules have become so complex. Could be since I've deliberately cut my cable bills by eliminating premium channels including ESPN and NFL channel I'm unable to watch games I want to watch. Since I'm a Bronco fan, I'm bound to have less interest unless the Broncos are on. Maybe the NFL is still caught in delivery mechanisms from the prior century. That is, when I want to watch a TV show, I don't wait for it to be aired, I log on the internet and watch it. The NFL is getting there, but isn't there yet. All of those reasons would reduce my interest in football.
The kneeling has an impact as well.
I get a certain amount of enjoyment from football and am willing to pay a certain price (dollars and time). The NFL has been reducing my enjoyment with the rule complexity and kneeling and increasing the cost by sticking to a traditional distribution method.
I was thinking about this when Serena Williams went through her melt-down at the US Open. Her behavior reduced my enjoyment of the game. I had the exact same reaction when McEnroe, Connors and Nastase had their meltdowns during matches. I simply enjoy the game less and because of that am unwilling to pay the same price, in time and dollars, as previously.
Management and laobr of the NFL and the USTA have made decisions about the product they are asking me to buy and increasingly I'm saying, "no thanks." It has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, or Trump or MeToo of Sexism or the Patriarchy. I just want to watch football and tennis. If you start throwing extraneous, to me, issues into it, my enjoyment diminishes and I'll pay less.
Bill
I don't know when I flipped past the NE game. I just remember the score was Jags big, NE little. "That's too bad," I thought, "Maybe because the defensive coach with the beard is gone," and flipped.
Mabye I'm just bored with football and the way the rules have become so complex. Could be since I've deliberately cut my cable bills by eliminating premium channels including ESPN and NFL channel I'm unable to watch games I want to watch. Since I'm a Bronco fan, I'm bound to have less interest unless the Broncos are on. Maybe the NFL is still caught in delivery mechanisms from the prior century. That is, when I want to watch a TV show, I don't wait for it to be aired, I log on the internet and watch it. The NFL is getting there, but isn't there yet. All of those reasons would reduce my interest in football.
The kneeling has an impact as well.
I get a certain amount of enjoyment from football and am willing to pay a certain price (dollars and time). The NFL has been reducing my enjoyment with the rule complexity and kneeling and increasing the cost by sticking to a traditional distribution method.
I was thinking about this when Serena Williams went through her melt-down at the US Open. Her behavior reduced my enjoyment of the game. I had the exact same reaction when McEnroe, Connors and Nastase had their meltdowns during matches. I simply enjoy the game less and because of that am unwilling to pay the same price, in time and dollars, as previously.
Management and laobr of the NFL and the USTA have made decisions about the product they are asking me to buy and increasingly I'm saying, "no thanks." It has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, or Trump or MeToo of Sexism or the Patriarchy. I just want to watch football and tennis. If you start throwing extraneous, to me, issues into it, my enjoyment diminishes and I'll pay less.
Bill
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Poverty and Politics
Eli,
Thanks for sharing the The 2017 Distressed Communities report with me. It's a fascinating report and a touches on a few topics I am particularly interested in.
One of the things that struck me, maybe not what the authors wanted me to focus on, is how prosperous most of the country is. If I listened to the Failing New York Times and other mouthpieces of the Liberal Industrial Establishment I'd come to believe there are only two types of people in the US: the 1% lighting up their cigars with $100 bills and the rest of us living in a neo-Dickensian nightmare. But then there is this, from the report:
I subscribe to a newsletter called Granola Shotgun that discusses many housing issues in America. This post in particular was interesting: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. The author talks about the great migration west but everything has a beginning middle and end, including towns:
One of the themes Granola focuses on is the impact government policies have. Many policies, restrictive zoning for instance, or many of the wetlands regulations, benefit the well-off by making it more expensive to build housing. San Francisco is one of Granola's favorite subjects with regard to zoning regulations. And it seems to contradict his "Beginning, Middle, End" thesis which seems more deterministic.
I saw another chart in the Distressed report that caught my eye:
I have a couple of converging theories on calories and weight gain in the US. I maintain the market system has been incredibly successful in lowering the price of a calorie. The US food industry has also been particularly good at creating yummy calories at a very low price point. 240 calories for a Payday candy bar, 240 for 1.75 ounce bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips and 150 from a can of Pepsi gets me to 30% of my RDA. But it's not just calories, its bad calories, chock full of carbs/sugar, which I think keeps you hungry and results in greater diabetes. So we have low price per calorie, or low price per gram of carbs, which results in poor health outcomes. [One of the many issues I had with the assumptions on Obamacare was assuming poor health outcomes were a function of poorly delivered health care. Maybe our health outcomes has more to do with our lifestyle choices including fast cars, guns and carbs.] Why the distribution shown in the Distressed report slopes the way it slopes I'll leave to someone else.
Bill
Thanks for sharing the The 2017 Distressed Communities report with me. It's a fascinating report and a touches on a few topics I am particularly interested in.
One of the things that struck me, maybe not what the authors wanted me to focus on, is how prosperous most of the country is. If I listened to the Failing New York Times and other mouthpieces of the Liberal Industrial Establishment I'd come to believe there are only two types of people in the US: the 1% lighting up their cigars with $100 bills and the rest of us living in a neo-Dickensian nightmare. But then there is this, from the report:
I recognize 110 million people "at risk" or "distressed" is a lot. 150 million prosperous and comfortable is a country that is sharing the wealth to much greater extent than the Occupy crowd pules about.
It reminded me of this chart I grabbed from AEI. The author admits the middle class is shrinking. Because more of the middle class are moving to the upper classed. Seems to be a similar take by the Distressed Community crowd.
I'm also fascinated by the reduced mobility in the US. Famously, in the 1800's, Georgians wanting to escape their creditors would place a sign on their empty house "GTT," Gone to Texas. We like to think of ourselves as a nation of immigrants. First we immigrated from the old world for a better life here and we move within the US seeking out a better place. That tendency seems to be less these days.
The report states:
I have an unproven thesis that one of the reasons for the reduced mobility is the increased SNAP and public assistance benefits, so cause, not effect. And I wonder why we want to build up dying towns. Why not a GTT voucher?Prosperous zip codes may contain 32.5 million more Americans than distressed zip codes, but distressed ones contain three times as many people receiving SNAP and other cash public assistance benefits—14.3 million compared to 4.7 million. With people less likely than ever to move—and with low income people some of the least able to afford the costs and risks of moving—there is a compelling public policy rationale for investing in the economic development of the places where public assistance beneficiaries are concentrated.
I subscribe to a newsletter called Granola Shotgun that discusses many housing issues in America. This post in particular was interesting: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. The author talks about the great migration west but everything has a beginning middle and end, including towns:
But everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end. After decades of rapid rural population growth and relative prosperity circumstances conspired to dismantle small family farms. The mechanization of agriculture, the rise of industrial cities, boom and bust economic cycles, and the deployment of young people during the First and Second World Wars all gradually depopulated the countryside. The final nail in the coffin struck when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz radically altered federal policy in the early 1970s toward heavily subsidize large scale vertically integrated corporate agribusiness. “Get big, or get out.” Commodity crops are now cheaper and more plentiful than ever as a result, but much of what was left of the rural landscape was eviscerated.Migration from farms to cities decimated the rural life and migration from cities to suburbs decimated some cities:
As downtowns all across the country began to fail in the mid twentieth century newly built suburbs were thriving. Society decided it was easier to create new places than fix what was wrong with the old ones. A whole host of federal legislation such as the National Housing Act of 1934, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided the government subsidies and legal mechanisms that promoted suburban development. And for the last several decades these places have been the economic, cultural, and political center of American life. It’s the only landscape many people have ever known.Granola followed up with this post The Sacred Cul-de-Sac: Lakewood, which is well worth 5 minutes of your time.
One of the themes Granola focuses on is the impact government policies have. Many policies, restrictive zoning for instance, or many of the wetlands regulations, benefit the well-off by making it more expensive to build housing. San Francisco is one of Granola's favorite subjects with regard to zoning regulations. And it seems to contradict his "Beginning, Middle, End" thesis which seems more deterministic.
I saw another chart in the Distressed report that caught my eye:
I have a couple of converging theories on calories and weight gain in the US. I maintain the market system has been incredibly successful in lowering the price of a calorie. The US food industry has also been particularly good at creating yummy calories at a very low price point. 240 calories for a Payday candy bar, 240 for 1.75 ounce bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips and 150 from a can of Pepsi gets me to 30% of my RDA. But it's not just calories, its bad calories, chock full of carbs/sugar, which I think keeps you hungry and results in greater diabetes. So we have low price per calorie, or low price per gram of carbs, which results in poor health outcomes. [One of the many issues I had with the assumptions on Obamacare was assuming poor health outcomes were a function of poorly delivered health care. Maybe our health outcomes has more to do with our lifestyle choices including fast cars, guns and carbs.] Why the distribution shown in the Distressed report slopes the way it slopes I'll leave to someone else.
Bill
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Poverty and Politics Are An Unpredictable Mix
Bill,
A DC think tank recently published an interesting report titled The 2017 Distressed Communities Index. With a lot of fancy animated maps and graphs ( which you know I like), the report documents the demography of poverty across the United States, documenting the difference between rich and poor in terms of location, education, employment and various other indicators of economic success or failure. Among the chief take home points is the observation that prosperity is widely distributed but poverty is not, with a disproportionate concentration of distressed communities found in the South and Southwest. Furthermore, distressed cities notwithstanding (we're talking about you Cleveland), there is high correlation between population density and prosperity; the more people in a given place, the better off they seem to be.
I'm way not smart enough to figure out what these data might mean in terms of potential solutions, either from the top down or bottom up, for the 17% of Americans who live in distressed communities, As a political junkie, I find the data fascinating in terms of the weak correlation between the economic status of these areas and how they vote. Here is deeply prosperous and deeply blue Virginia (distress rate 17%) side by side with deeply distressed and deeply red West Virginia (distressed rate 34%). Poor New Mexico (29%) votes blue, while more prosperous Texas (22%) remains deeply red. These data, it seems it me, say something powerful about the limitations of an economic message as a tool to attract voters. The Republicans, it seems, have already absorbed that lesson
Eli
A DC think tank recently published an interesting report titled The 2017 Distressed Communities Index. With a lot of fancy animated maps and graphs ( which you know I like), the report documents the demography of poverty across the United States, documenting the difference between rich and poor in terms of location, education, employment and various other indicators of economic success or failure. Among the chief take home points is the observation that prosperity is widely distributed but poverty is not, with a disproportionate concentration of distressed communities found in the South and Southwest. Furthermore, distressed cities notwithstanding (we're talking about you Cleveland), there is high correlation between population density and prosperity; the more people in a given place, the better off they seem to be.
I'm way not smart enough to figure out what these data might mean in terms of potential solutions, either from the top down or bottom up, for the 17% of Americans who live in distressed communities, As a political junkie, I find the data fascinating in terms of the weak correlation between the economic status of these areas and how they vote. Here is deeply prosperous and deeply blue Virginia (distress rate 17%) side by side with deeply distressed and deeply red West Virginia (distressed rate 34%). Poor New Mexico (29%) votes blue, while more prosperous Texas (22%) remains deeply red. These data, it seems it me, say something powerful about the limitations of an economic message as a tool to attract voters. The Republicans, it seems, have already absorbed that lesson
Eli
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